Forrester research in the states has recently published an article stating that it predicts ITIL will become mainstream in 2005 in the US, in terms of widespread useage within the business environment.
Does anyone consider it widespread in their country - or is it still "niche".
In the UK, I think it is widespread, however I believe it is not widely understood (or sometimes appreciated) by the more senior/executive levels of management within our organisations. It is my belief that Service Management still lags behind Prince2 and other more project orientated roles. I'd be interested to read what other people think - in other countries?

I am working in Japan for a US based organization. Our org lives by Six Sigma, and ITIL is still considered niche... Something that most of the upper level IT management has heard of, and knows is coming, but not a concept that is being pushed at all.

Here in western Canada I would say that ITIL is still considered niche. Large organizations are exploring it, rolling out some pieces of it, but it is certainly not ingrained as the way to do business as of yet.

In the US it is definitely "niche" but growing. Like in the UK it is a matter of lack of understanding. Many people I meet see ITIL as only the ten core disciplines. I see it as a much larger "management" or "governance" framework. Also ITIL is competing against more mature and established frameworks (Zachman, Project Management, TQM, Six Sigma, etc). I hope that the "owners" of these frameworks will one day work to eliminate redundancies and begin to integrate and lock together into a more "unified best practice framework" for business and IT.

Still niche in Japan.
However, Japanese IT industory's big companies seem to take interest of itil topic, but they don't move on their practcal business field yet.
ITSMF JAPAN looks like closing world, not to show the ITIL case, etc. to spread out.

I work out of India. ITIL is still considered niche here though people have heard about it. Organizations are trying to improve their IT processes based on ITIL slowly. I had tried implementing the ITIL framework based processes in a Government organization. However, I must admit, the system is not very open to accept new standards.

I'm in the US, and have been in IT for 18+ years, working on development, infrastructure and PM consulting work for both Fortune 500 and midsize. I have been a Director and VP over the past 8 years.

Until this year (contracting for an automotive OEM), I have never heard of ITIL. I'm not directly working on the project, but I know tht my client is looking at ITIL, and implementing peices of it. Honestly, I think the reason why they are looking at it is to stay ahead of the curve and prepare, if it really is coming. My client likes to play around with a new 'stuff'.

I know that abroad ITIL has been populaar, but not sure how it will be recieved here. Methodolgies like Microsofts MSF and RUP which have been around for many years still are not being used properly. It seems that every client has control and managmnet issues whether with process, measurement or general IT management. I don't think that ITIL is going to help, because there are already frameworks and documentation out there. IT departments need to execute better, and use what they have.

We were planning to use CobiT, which is a more comprehensive IT governance framework. It looks like we'll probably be using a blend of CobiT/CMMI/ITIL, depending on the particular needs for a subject area.

CobiT and CMMI are at least free, so we can investigate their usefullness to our organization. I still have no real idea what ITIL is about, as I'm not paying $125 each for a bunch of books just to evaluate it. Luckily, I suppose, there's a corporate initiative that is sending me to get trained and will hopefully supply the books as well.

ITIL or ITSM is still in its infancy and early adoption stage in most countries. This is really about transforming the culture of IT to a service culture and removing the common practice of technical stovepipe organizations that do not work well together.

Tricks you can try with senior management to turn their heads around include:

Technology without the ability to deploy and operate it day-to-day will
result in a colossal waste of money.

Grab an organization chart from the IT organization - if it looks like a configuration database schema (i.e. Server group, PC group, network group, mid-range group, etc.) - who's taking care of customers and end users?

Have them walk down to the IT department, grab almost any employee and ask them to state what SERVICE they provide to the company and what their role is in providing it - I guarantee that 9 out of 10 IT people cannot answer this question.

IT simply cannot operate this way any longer - if it does, costs will continue to rise and quality will continue to deteriorate as new technologies keep coming on board and business models change.

From working at the Service Desk in an Australian tertiary institution and reading the ITIL foundation course. ITIL has been really popular in Europe, Australia, Canada and some commonwealth countries. ITIL was established by the UK office of government commerce. So it is really established in western europe and english-speaking countries. It is gaining a foothold in the United States with multi-national corporations like IBM, Proctor and Gamble...etc.

ITIL is entrenched in Australia's IT Services sector and alot of government institutions as well as private enterprises are looking at ITIL seriously.

I think that ITIL in Australia is definitely the current 'big thing' and large IT shops all over are ramping it up.

But the number of people nation wide who have the manager's level qualification can still be number in the 100s - which is an extremely small percentage of people in management positions.

Anecdotally (and from attendance at events, seminars and conferences) many organisations are attempting some level of 'implementation' but many are spinning their wheels, and struggling with it.

Many senior managers I deal with, or meet, are 'old campaigners' for whom ITIL is one of many resources - and often it's a case of cherry picking the bits that address their most immediate concerns, rather than overhaul or reform. (Which is not a criticism).

It's another matter with vendors and consultants in the ITSM (and related) spaces: There is a bit of a feeding frenzy for executitive + ITIL talent. Someone with a successful implementation under their belt who also has a senior management resume can now pull a salary on the very comfortable side of $100K quite easily.

There is a lot of awareness of it here and many organisations have ITIL as a "stated direction" but have no firm commitment. It won't kick off until Senior Management, and that means the CIO, starts to put money behind any ITIL initiatives. The big consulting and systems integration companies are all training up in it but it's a just in case exercise... to my knowledge, none of them are implementing it internally...

Forrester research in the states has recently published an article stating that it predicts ITIL will become mainstream in 2005 in the US, in terms of widespread useage within the business environment.
Does anyone consider it widespread in their country - or is it still "niche".
In the UK, I think it is widespread, however I believe it is not widely understood (or sometimes appreciated) by the more senior/executive levels of management within our organisations. It is my belief that Service Management still lags behind Prince2 and other more project orientated roles. I'd be interested to read what other people think - in other countries?

My limited experience thusfar is ITIL is being rolled out by large organizations - esp those which fall under the auspices of Sarb-Ox regulations - rather than SMBs._________________DrGroove
ITIL Architect | Moderator, Devshed.com | Technology journalist